


Another Year Over

by cornpony



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Porn With Plot, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 06:44:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17279030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cornpony/pseuds/cornpony
Summary: Away-from-base missions are draining on your mind, body, and soul.  But it always helps when you don't have to go through it alone.





	Another Year Over

Winter in Coldfront was brutal.The icy winds were so strong that the cabin was constantly creaking and groaning and shifting, threatening to collapse on top of them. 

Cold air seeped into the cabin through old, loose windows and a large gap beneath the front door.No matter how many boards they nailed across the windows, no matter how many kitchen towels they stuffed under the gap in the front door, they couldn’t keep the cold completely out.

At least the fireplace was in good working condition and there was ample firewood to burn.Pine logs were stacked neatly on the cabin’s front porch, making it simple to scurry out into the cold and grab one when needed.The workshop out back had enough wood in reserve for several tough winters to come.There would be no danger of running out of their only heat source.

By some stroke of luck, their radio picked up a station with an English-speaking DJ.They kept it on all the time for background noise, as neither of them could stand the deafening silence.Half the time, the songs were long-forgotten oldies, but it played more modern songs sometimes.Currently, they were enjoying the musical stylings of “What’s New Pussycat.”

“Hey, an actually good song,” Scout said, grinning at Sniper from across the table. 

The table and chairs, of course, were made from the same pine logs that burned in the fireplace, and really shouldn’t be so close to the flames.But Sniper wasn’t afraid of anything catching on fire.In fact, he almost wished it would _._ If the whole cabin were set ablaze, maybe they could go home early.

Sniper reached behind him and turned the radio up a couple clicks.He was indifferent about this song, but Scout always perked up when newer music played.

Spread out across the table was a large paper game board, creased and faded from being folded and unfolded so much.Brightly-colored cards were scattered across it, some in little piles, some not.If Scout hadn’t thought to smuggle in the paper game board and the cards alongside their food rations, both of them would’ve gone mad by now.As it was, Sniper actually began to look forward to their nightly card game.

Scout picked up the joint smoldering in the ashtray and took a long pull from it.They were lucky enough to find a laughable amount of pot hidden alongside their medical supplies, and there was no need for the harried puff-puff-pass of normal smoking, since there was no danger of them running out.Sniper imagined it would go stale and-or rot before they could smoke half of it.

And this wasn’t your run of the mill weed.This was good stuff.Whoever snuck it in with the rest of their supplies was a fucking saint.

“Your turn, Snipes,” Scout said on the exhale, thick smoke billowing from his mouth.

“Yeah,” Sniper grumbled.He stared down at the cards lined up in front of him, then looked at the cards in his hand, then back at the cards on the board.He took a fingertip and nudged one of his cards from a vertical position to a horizontal one.

“That’s all I got,” Sniper said as he moved his card.

He plucked the joint from the ashtray.Sniper thought he tasted a bit of fruit flavor in the smoke, almost like blueberry.Scout said the smoke tasted like ass.To each his own.

“You don’t got anybody you can put right here?” Scout asked, tapping the vacant square of game board on Sniper’s side.

“No,” Sniper said dismally. 

“Then you know what that means,” Scout said, cracking a wicked grin.

Sniper grinned back.“Fuck you.”

Scout slapped down a holofoil card on his side of the board.“I’m gonna use this little bitch to attack your health points _directly_.”

Sometimes they had to use a calculator to add and subtract their health points, but in this case, no calculations were needed.Scout had obviously won.

“I win again,” Scout said.He flicked the ash from the end of the joint and took a drag.“You suck, Snipes.Hah.”

“You cheated, you fucking gremlin.”Sniper began to sweep all the cards together into a pile. 

Scout gaped at him.“Kiss my fat ass,” he shot back.

Sniper smirked.“Don’t tempt me.”

They flirted constantly and casually, something Sniper never thought he’d have the stones to do with someone else.Sniper wasn’t sure if Scout was serious about it or only joking.He didn’t know if he himself was serious about it. 

All he knew was this:there was no sense of privacy in this cabin and all social norms were meaningless.He didn’t know _what_ was going on.He lied to himself, telling himself he didn’t care.

Sniper crushed the near-depleted joint into the ashtray and lit another. 

“I’m getting munchies now,” Scout announced.“Let’s make food.”

They moved over to their adjacent sleeping bags spread out in front of the fireplace (yet another fire hazard they ignored).Using a long-handled pot, Sniper made popcorn over the flame.Sniper had the bad habit of grabbing a large handful of popcorn and nibbling it from his palm, like a horse chewing oats.Scout liked to toss it up in the air, piece by piece, and catch it in his mouth.He almost never missed, which Sniper found strangely impressive.

Sniper alternated between smoking a bit, snacking on popcorn, and listening to Scout’s endless ramblings.Scout’s accent was so fascinating, such a thick Bostonian twang.For reasons unknown, Sniper’s favorite word to hear him say was the word “garbage.”He pronounced it like _gahbidge_. 

It was cute. 

“Anyway,” Scout said, “I know you coulda done this whole mission by yourself.”He tossed a piece of popcorn up in the air and caught it deftly between his teeth. _Crunch_.“But they made me come here so you’d have to babysit me.”

Before Sniper could think of a reply, Scout continued.“I know I’m annoying and everybody wanted me outta their hair for awhile.So, uh…sorry you got stuck with me.”

“ _And it looks like we have time for one last song in Year 74_ ,” the radio DJ said.“ _Here’s one of my personal favorites from this year._ ”The rhythmic chant from “Hooked on a Feeling” rumbled from the radio speaker.

“Holy shit, is it New Year’s Eve already?” Scout said.

“Guess it is,” Sniper said.It was so easy to lose track of time when you were out in the middle of nowhere.“One more month, and we’ll be heading home.”

“Yep,” Scout said.Sniper thought there would be further elaboration following that one-syllable reply, but there was not.

Halfway through the song, Sniper broke the silence. 

“By the way,” he said, “I’m not _stuck_ with you.Miss Pauling offered to let me do this mission on my own, but I didn’t think that would be wise.” 

Sniper was antisocial, to be sure, but he’d never been truly alone.Even though he lived separately from his teammates in a camper behind their compound, he knew he could walk into the base whenever he wanted.He had a pet owl that came and went as she pleased, but she always flew in at least once a night to nip at his ear and harass him for treats. 

But out here in the cabin, this small, drafty cabin miles away from civilization, he’d be _alone_ -alone.He was afraid of the dark thoughts that would creep into his brain, afraid of what he might do to himself.This far away from New Mexico, the respawn system was shoddy at best.He could off himself and stand a good chance at never regenerating. 

It would be tempting to try it.

“So Miss Pauling asked me who I wanted to go with me,” he continued, “and I…requested you.”

Scout’s eyes, heavy-lidded and bloodshot, widened in surprise.“You did?”

“Yeah,” Sniper said.“The rest of the lads weren’t trying to get rid of you.I picked you.”

“Why?” 

Sniper’s stomach squirmed. 

“I like you.”

Scout stared at him for a moment.Then, softly:

“I like you too.”

It was impossible to tell who started leaning in first.Maybe they gravitated toward one another at the exact same time.Scout reached up, resting a hand on the side of Sniper’s face.Their lips met.They were hesitant to touch each other at first, but their inhibitions gradually dissolved into something needy, almost desperate.

Sniper wrapped his arms around Scout’s middle, pulling and guiding the man into his lap.The bulges in their trousers brushed against one another, causing Scout to take a sharp breath through his nostrils.Scout sunk his fingers into Sniper’s shaggy mop of hair, gripping at the cowlick at the nape of his neck.

Their kissing, if you could even call it that, was a sloppy blur of teeth and tongue and lips and saliva that was gradually becoming more feral. Scout pulled his mouth off Sniper’s and put his wet lips against Sniper’s ear.

“You didn’t happen to bring any lube with you, didja?” he asked, his hot breath tracing the shell of Sniper’s ear.

“I did not,” Sniper said dejectedly, his voice nothing more than a low rumble in his chest.He hadn’t anticipated shagging his coworker in the middle of the fucking tundra in a rotted old cabin.Who _could_ anticipate something like that?Personal lubricant had not been on his list of things to pack.

“That’s okay,” Scout said. He pressed a kiss to Sniper’s jaw.“Can I blow you?”

Those words sent a jolt of arousal straight to Sniper’s cock.He dug his fingertips into the small of Scout’s back.

“Do you want to?” he said in reply, trying hard to keep his voice even.

Another kiss to his jaw. 

“Yeah.”

Scout maintained eye contact while he sucked him off, something Sniper didn’t know he was into until it happened in front of him.Sniper hissed in breaths through his teeth, fighting the urge to jerk his hips. 

It had been a long time since someone had touched him like this and he knew he wouldn’t last long.He came far more quickly than he would’ve liked.He bit his own tongue to keep from crying out. 

Sniper was convinced he’d just had his soul sucked out through the tip of his dick.To further prove this theory, Scout pulled off Sniper’s cock with a wet _pop_ and stuck out his tongue, proudly displaying a pearly wad still lingering in his mouth.Like a true champ, he swallowed it down.

_God is real_ , Sniper thought numbly, _and he’s in this room tonight_.

Sniper grasped Scout by the waist, guiding him back into his lap.He decided he’d try to be bold on this lovely winter evening and slipped his hand between Scout’s legs, giving some much-desired friction to the bulge in Scout’s trousers.

“Your turn, gremlin,” Sniper said.“What…”

Sniper knew what he wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure if he could bring himself to say it aloud.It sounded…stupid.

Well, he’d gone this far.May as well keep at it.

“Tell me what you want,” Sniper murmured.

“Oh my god,” Scout breathed.His hands flew to his crotch to fumble with his zipper.“Just, just—jerk me off a little bit, it’s gonna take like _ten_ seconds, I promise—”

That’s all Sniper needed to hear.He dipped his hands into Scout’s jeans and tugged at the waistband of his boxers, pulling them down just enough to free his cock.He gripped it in his fist, maybe a bit rougher than necessary, pumping it experimentally. 

“How’s that?” Sniper asked, once he’d settled into a good rhythm. 

“So good,” Scout managed to say, giving Sniper a weak nod.“Can—can I kiss you?”

Sniper grinned.“You don’t need to ask me first,” he assured him, “I think we’re a bit past that, don’t you think?”

“I mean, I just had your dick in my mouth, I thought I’d ask.”

An eager tongue plunged into Sniper’s mouth, which Sniper responded in kind by quickening the pace of his hand.Scout groaned in approval, his breath growing quicker, more erratic. 

“Hey, uh,” he said, pulling his mouth a hair’s breadth away from Sniper’s.“Just gonna let—let ya know, uh—“ 

Scout buried his face in the crook of Sniper’s neck, muffling his cries as he came.Sniper stroked him lazily until his cock wilted in his hand.

Chest heaving, Scout dislodged himself from the crook of Sniper’s neck.“Oh my god,” he said, his eyes hazy with afterglow.“That really happened.”

“That really happened,” Sniper agreed.For a blissful moment, they grinned stupidly at one another, both of them still reveling in what they’d just done.

Scout’s gaze drifted downwards and his eyes grew wide in shock. 

“Shit,” he said under his breath.

“’S matter?”

“I think I mighta ruined your shirt.”

Sniper followed Scout’s gaze, his eyes landing on a sizable stain striped across the bottom of his shirt.He wasn’t angry about it.Quite the opposite, in fact—he felt an odd sense of pride at the sight of it, almost like it was a twisted badge of honor.

“No worries,” Sniper said.“I’ll give it a soak in cold water, it’ll come right out.”

Scout snorted at him.“Dealt with this kinda problem before, huh?”

“Maybe.”

Scout rolled out of Sniper’s lap and tucked himself back into his jeans.Sniper got the vibe that something was off about Scout, but he couldn’t put a finger on what.Maybe it was that hard-to-read expression on his face.Maybe it was those eyes, normally so bright, now clouded-over and dull.

“Something’s on your mind,” Sniper said.“What is it?”

Scout took a shaky breath.

“Can we hang out and stuff after we go back home?” Scout blurted, “or is this the kinda thing we never talk about again?”

Sniper didn’t offer an immediate answer.He took a moment to let Scout’s words percolate in his brain.

“It’s alright if you wanna pretend this never happened, I won’t mind,” Scout added, but Sniper noticed the slight furrow of Scout’s brow, the almost imperceptible narrowing of Scout’s eyes.These were the telltale signs that he was lying.

“Why would I want to do that?” Sniper asked him, offering up a slight smile.

Scout shrugged.“That’s just…how it usually happens for me, y’know?” he said, punctuating his sentence with a mirthless laugh. 

Sniper did the first thing that came to his mind, which was to lean over and give Scout a peck on the forehead.He was immediately embarrassed that he’d done something so odd, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

“I’m not very good at this kind of thing,” Sniper said, “and I’ll admit that this was a bit, er…unplanned.But I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t _want_ to do it.And…”

Sniper stalled for time by clearing his throat.He didn’t know the best way to phrase what he was about to say.

“And I definitely…like you.And I like being with you.”The words tumbled unpredictably from his mouth.“It’s nice to have somebody around, for once, to…talk to, and…play cards, and…you know…have breakfast together, and…”

Subconsciously, Sniper began to fumble with a wrinkle in the sleeping bag they were sitting on.Cool nylon slipped across his fingertips.

“….And I don’t feel like I’m gonna get backstabbed in my fucking sleep anymore,” he added.“That’s a good thing.”

Like flipping a switch, Scout’s face brightened.“I wasn’t gonna say anything ‘cause it’s weird, but I haven’t had a _single_ night terror since we been here.”

“I didn’t know you had night terrors.”

“Exactly,” Scout nodded, “it’s freakin amazing.Not—the night terrors, _they’re_ not amazing, but the _not_ having ‘em is amazing.”

Sniper nodded thoughtfully.“Well,” he said, “if it helps you so much, then we should…continue our current sleeping situation when we go home, yeah?”

“We should,” Scout agreed.“Only problem is, we’re not gonna be able to keep this a secret from the guys for very long.You know how my…you know how Spy is, he’s a nosy asshole and he loves to make me miserable, so I’m sure he’ll come up with a great way to tell everybody about us.”

“So let him tell everybody,” Sniper said simply.“We’re not doing anything to be ashamed of.God, look at Doc and Heavy.They’re _married_ , for chrissake.Nobody gives them any shit about it.”

“That’s because Doc’s a fuckin psycho and Heavy can rip people in half like a phone book,” Scout pointed out, “nobody’s gonna mess with either one’a them.”

“Like a _phone book_?” Sniper said, brow creasing in confusion.

“Y’know, when you were a kid and you went to assembly at school, and the bodybuilder guy comes out and tells you how drugs are bad, and then he tears the phonebook in half with his bare hands?Ya never seen that before?”

“Mm, no,” Sniper said slowly.“Course, I never went to any of my school assemblies.I’d skive off to the parking lot and smoke pot.”

“You bad, bad boy,” Scout said, shaking his head in mock disapproval.“Speakin’ of, how ‘bout you roll us one last joint before we hit the hay?”He waggled his eyebrows enticingly.

“Why can’t you do it?” Sniper asked, “are your fingers broken?”

Scout opened his mouth to shoot back a retort, but Sniper held up a hand to calm him.“I’m only joking,” he said.“First, though—“

He stood up, and as he did so, he became aware of a sharp, burning pain in his lower back.He grunted, placing a hand on his back to steady himself.He’d locked himself into an odd position for far too long.Fuck, he was getting old.

“—Gonna take this shirt off and let it soak in some cold water,” Sniper said, hobbling toward the kitchen area of the cabin, his hand still pressed to his lower back.

“Yeah, if that jizz dries on there, you might as well throw the whole shirt in the gahbidge.‘Cause it’ll never come off after that.”

Sniper smiled enough to show his teeth, which was unusual.He fetched a mop bucket from beneath the kitchen sink and filled it with water, squirting some dish soap in there for good measure.He unbuttoned his shirt, slipped it off his shoulders, and stuffed it into the bucket.

“ _Folks, we are exactly twenty-six minutes into Year 75_ ,” came the DJ’s voice from the radio.“ _Thanks for calling into the station with all those song requests.This one goes out to all you foxy ladies out there_.”

Then came the voice of Tom Jones singing the opening chorus to “What’s New Pussycat.”

“Good lord,” Sniper said.“They’re playing that again?”

“This is the best night of my life,” Scout said dreamily.

After they split the final joint of the night, they decided to try and get some sleep.Sniper went out to the front porch and grabbed a log for the fire, and by the time he came back inside, Scout was snoring loudly in his sleeping bag. 

Smiling to himself, Sniper threw the log on the fire and switched off the radio.He only had four hours before he needed to be up for work, but he could function on far less sleep than that. 

As he burrowed into his sleeping bag, his mind replayed the events of the past few hours on a loop.It was unreal.Many times, he jolted awake from a shallow doze, convinced he’d dreamed it all.

Over and over again, he ran his hand across his chest, just to feel his undershirt there.That made him remember why he’d taken off his button-up in the first place, how it was soaking in a bucket in the kitchen.And he knew he hadn’t imagined it after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I wish there was a word I could use other than “joint” (I feel like I typed it a thousand times in this fic) but there’s not a good alternative that sounds like something an actual human would say ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> I wrote a fic a year (??) ago called Coldfront, which is sorta similar to this story, but they don’t go together. Also there was a fireplace scene in my last oneshot too lmao it’s just that time of year I guess
> 
> Oh and on my third read-through of this, I noticed I mentioned what’s new pussycat AND a school assembly guy ripping a phone book in half?? My entire family uses a certain comedian as background noise for all our gatherings, and since it’s the holidays (well it WAS the holidays) I heard him a lot. I guess I subconsciously wrote some familiar goofs into my story. I was going to edit them out, but I couldn’t think of anything to replace it with, so there they shall stay.
> 
> Tumblr’s still being dumb so you can find me @cornpony_ on twitter (I still use my tumblr but with that garbage fire of a website who knows how long that’ll last)


End file.
